TYR Tactical

Posts Tagged ‘Aaron Barruga’

Aaron Barruga – Enough Is Enough: A Tactical Training PSA

Monday, November 14th, 2016


(Author’s photo circa Afghanistan 2012. The stretcher held a patient fighting for his life after an ambush. The red markings on the floor are his own blood)

I get it, the cargo pant commando training culture of the 90’s and early 2000’s just isn’t compatible with the current generation of tech savvy tactical shooters. Millennials–who aren’t just teenagers and can be adults in their 30’s–are accustomed to a simple message they’ve heard their entire life “mainstream isn’t cool.”

I understand the frustration with legacy Special Operations instructors that are elevated to celebrity status, despite their complete inability to articulate a thought, or present information in a non condescending manner. There is nothing more painful than watching a commando, rich with experience, fumble through talking to a camera to convey a point, or interact on Instagram in the same manner as our grandparents.

This is why audiences gave hope and promise to the mediocre instructor–with no experience–made popular by social media. His neglect of tactical cargo-panted-velcro everything signaled a direct message, he is relatable, he is like me. It is also intoxicating to watch these individuals challenge conventional wisdom. When a mediocre instructor with no credentials whips a sarcastic quip at a career commando, it causes audiences to applaud in uproar of a counterculture instructor that has “beat the system”.

Although this might be clever marketing or culturally punk rock, it is dangerous for the transfer of knowledge. Despite any legacy SOF instructor’s inability to speak in front of a camera, or generate viral social media content, his lessons are hard learned in the real world with real blood and the real loss of brothers and sisters in arms.

What he lacks in social media charisma, he makes up for in battle hardened intestinal fortitude. His scars are both physical and emotional, not “training scars” from shooting at cardboard. So proceed forward shooters, elect your “instructors” because of their cool factor, just don’t expect them to have any answers for you when you pay hard prices in the real world.

Aaron Barruga is Special Forces veteran with deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Pacific Theater of Operations. He has trained foreign commandos, police officers, and militia fighters. He is the founder at Guerrilla Approach, LLC, where he consults law enforcement officers on counter-terrorism and vehicle tactics.

Gunfighter Moment – Aaron Barruga

Saturday, October 8th, 2016

Natural Instinct

windshield

A “combat snapshot” refers to how much information a shooter can process in his environment. This is both a proactive and retroactive process. For example, if an individual proceeds into a room from a hallway, he identifies the layout of the new room while remembering the layout of the hallway. This mental process is what helped our ancestors avoid becoming dinner for lions, and is what helps us perform other tasks such as texting while driving.

Our minds default to pattern recognition. If we enter an unfamiliar room (whether in combat or at a dinner party), our eyes will be drawn to motion. Our brains then employ a friend or foe heuristic that indicates whether we can remain calm or if other action should be taken (e.g. get out, there’s a lion at this dinner party!).

The quality at which we perceive information determines whether we receive data that is actionable or just noise. Entering a crowded room, you can scan the environment by simply moving your eyes within their sockets. Moving your head left and right may be necessary to gather data at different angles, but if we jerk our heads too quickly, any information about our surroundings becomes a blur. Another gift passed on to us from our ancestors is our body’s preference for expending the least amount of effort possible to accomplish a task. Unnecessary movement expends precious energy, but can also signal to predators our location.

Excessive movement also distracts our ability to obtain a combat snapshot. Recall any time you’ve been in the woods hunting or just hiking with family. Regardless of being a soldier or civilian, if you hear something that doesn’t sound right, you naturally slow your movement and alter your posture to scan your surroundings. Your eyes scan in their sockets, and your head moves in a methodical manner to assess the environment.

Consider that natural behavior in the woods and apply it to range training. Although tactical shooters are taught a variety of techniques for gaining a combat snapshot or regaining situational awareness, some methods tend place greater emphasis on performing pre and post shooting rituals. Unfortunately these movements provide no advantage in the real world, or worse, actually contradict our natural survival instincts.

cars

Search and assess theatrics are heavily critiqued among instructors with extensive combat or use of force experience. Although it is important to maintain situational awareness, unnecessary head whipping movements do little to provide a shooter with actionable data. The sister action to theatrical search and asses is a movement I’m going to coin as “spider monkeying”. This occurs when barriers or vehicles are incorporated in flat range training. Rather than reading the terrain and modifying their posture, shooters begin to bob and weave their head around obstacles. This is accompanied by excessive pushing and pulling of a pistol in and out of ready positions (e.g. position three to position four, back to position three, etc).

At full speed, spider monkeying looks like a shooter continuously bobbing and weaving like a boxer, combined with the push-pulling of a pistol into and away from his chest. This behavior occurs for two reasons. First, the shooter is attempting to maximize perceived cover while mistakenly assuming that the extra bob and weave movements are causing the enemy to remain reactive. Second, the shooter knows where all of the targets are located and isn’t required to alter his approach. Instead he can just shoot the scenario similar to a USPSA stage with no regards to application of cover and minimizing his silhouette.

Spider monkeying emphasizes the importance of adding blind shoots to range training. When a shooter must interact with a tactical scenario similar to the real world, it decelerates his movements. Instead of exaggerated bobbing, a shooter obtains a combat snapshot through purposeful action and throttle control. Although a shooter might transition between moving quickly and slowly, these are still deliberate actions as opposed to random head jerking. Why? Because in an uncertain environment, excessive movement will either visually give away your position or inhibit your ability to read data in the environment.

Further examination of throttle control can be observed in certain war movies and combat helmet camera footage. This week marked the 23rd anniversary of the events that would become famous through “Black Hawk Down”. Despite the movie’s delineation from actual events, the actors did do justice through their tactical portrayal of Rangers and Delta Operators. Weapon’s handling and fire team movements appeared similar to the real world. No unnecessary head bobbing or peek-a-boo, just methodical clearing of sectors.

Throttle control is also observed by watching helmet camera footage of soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. When soldiers make contact with the enemy there is chaos and ambiguity as platoons attempt to identify where the enemy is located. What is not readily observable is unnecessary movement. During the initial phases of a firefight, it is very hard to tell where enemy fire is coming from unless you are amid the enemy’s formation. This is why soldiers minimize their silhouette and scan their sectors to find new data to add to their combat snapshot. Unnecessary movement is not only disorienting, but it might attract the attention of a PKM machine gunner.

Our instincts represent the culmination of handed down survival mindset from our ancestors. Every lion evaded, spear dodged, or musket ball avoided has fined tuned our senses. To our advantage, we are genetically hardwired to avoid threats. In preparing for violent encounters, we should utilize as much of these senses as possible during range training events.

aaron

Aaron Barruga is a Special Forces veteran and founder at Guerrilla Approach LLC. He teaches vehicle tactics and speed shooting for tactical marksmanship.

www.guerrillaapproach.com
www.facebook.com/guerrillaapproach
www.instagram.com/guerrilla_approach

Gunfighter Moment is a weekly feature brought to you by Bravo Company USA. Bravo Company is home of the Gunfighters, and each week they bring us a different trainer to offer some words of wisdom.

The Opportunity Costs Of Stress Induced Training

Tuesday, April 5th, 2016

There is no such thing as a free lunch. Regardless of the political, social, or economic context of our actions, there is a give and take associated with everything. Economists define this as opportunity costs, which are the potential losses or gains we make by choosing one option over another.

With regards to tactical training, the give and take is between creating a realistic training environment without distracting the learning process. For example, a worthwhile stress shoot may physically exert a student prior to engaging in a course of fire. A distracting stress shoot may unnecessarily exhaust a shooter to the extent that performance becomes irrelevant.

Special Operations training schools and selection courses recognize that the best way to induce purposeful stress on students or candidates is by limiting their sleep, caloric intake, and increasing their physical activity. However, there is no such thing as a free lunch. Creating this type of training environment requires a lot of resources and most importantly time.

For range training events, it is both impractical and logistically inefficient to limit a shooter’s caloric intake and sleep. Instead, instructors rely on physical exertion as a primary method for inducing combat-like stress within the restrictions of flat range.

But what is purposeful stress on the range? Attempts at creatively inducing stress outside of physical exertion also manifest in the form of yelling at shooters, throwing objects at them, duct taping body parts, and even beginning drills by falling on the ground to simulate being knocked down.

We should keep an open mind with regards to training methods, but be cautious of over-the-top behavior that correlates harder with being better. At the best training events and commercial schools I attended in the military, stress induction was always supplementary to the overall training objective, and patterned in manner that didn’t distort our perceptions of real world performance.

At shooting schools, this meant courses of fire designed to induce stress were either front loaded with some type of physical activity (e.g. sprints, push-ups, a kettle bell carry), or physical exertion was built into the activity by means of distance travelled during a scrambler, or moving a casualty during a scenario.

At a commercial shooting school that was fun-but distracted from learning-we were maced prior to engaging in a break contact drill. Did this induce stress? Absolutely, but it wasn’t meaningful because it was not patterned after any type of real world situation. Under these circumstances, harder was different, but arguably not better for students.

But I’ve never done push-ups or a kettle bell carry before getting in a firefight! The validity of conducting PT prior to a course of fire is that it is fundamentally different than the shooting activity itself. This allows students to disassociate the two acts, which mitigates any chance for misinterpretation of the overall training objective.

In marksmanship or mechanics based drills, disassociating artificial stress from real world expectations is not as difficult. For example, a shooter recognizes that by performing sprints before a drill he is forced to control his breathing and also shoot with an elevated heart rate. Where trouble arises is when scenario-based or “what if” drills attempt to induce stress, but actually end up confusing a shooter.

This is best demonstrated in the “fall down then draw from concealment on my back” type of exercise. Can a threat knock you down? Yes, but further examination of this type of drill exposes its negative returns.

Although drawing from concealment on your back is easily learned (even without falling down), the benefit of this type of drill is that you complete repetitions that reinforce a non-standard draw position. However, the consequence is that it does not properly condition a student for what may actually happen if an aggressor pushes you to the ground in the real world. More than likely he will be on top of you continuing his assault, and may actually disarm you if he identifies you are reaching for a concealed weapon.

This should cause a shift in the training method so that we do not distort our understanding of what happens in the real world. Instead of falling on the ground and drawing from concealment, perhaps we should move to the sparring mats, use inert pistols, and develop an exercise that closely resembles what would happen in the real world.

Is there a training value in getting up and falling down? No, because it distracts from the overall objective of preparing students for a close quarter fight. Measuring value added in training exercises should also be applied to physical exertion. For example, do you need to do 200 push-ups before shooting a drill, or can you instead do 20 and have the same desired affect of shooting with an elevated heart rate?

We should always seek to pattern exercises to prepare our minds for the real world. Harder or different is not always better. In the earlier example of breaking contact after being maced, my team’s performance did not suffer. Because we had years of experience executing the drill without unnecessary gimmicks or theatrics, our minds had been patterned in such a manner that we knew “what right looked like” regardless of any added pain stimulus.

The military refers to the “what right looks like” training technique as the jumpmaster method. In order to train soldiers to properly inspect parachute equipment and lead paratroopers on airborne operations, jumpmaster students are repeatedly shown how to inspect a properly rigged parachute.

When deficiencies are finally added to the inspection process they noticeably standout. Deficiencies are also added in a no nonsense manner that replicates real world rigging issues. This allows instructors to continue patterning a student’s perception of what to expect in the real world without distracting the learning process.

Special Operations uses this same training methodology with combat marksmanship and small unit tactics. Rather than distracting a student with gimmicks, soldiers are instead drilled (often to the extent of boredom) to standards that reinforce “what right looks like.”

When artificial stress is eventually added, shooters fall back on uncorrupted fundamentals. This means that throwing rocks at students or duct taping their hands provides little value added to the training environment when compared to more purposeful methods of inducing stress.

Range events do not have to be boring and we should always keep our minds open; but there is opportunity costs associated with everything. By choosing to perform activity X, what am I losing by not performing Y, and is this actually ruining my perceptions of what happens in the real world?

Or think of it this way, which jumpmaster would you want inspecting your parachute? The individual trained under rigorous standards that replicated real world circumstances, or the individual that was exposed to poorly thought out “what if” gimmicks that distracted his learning process?

 

Aaron is Special Forces combat veteran. Find out more about his training courses at:

www.guerrillaapproach.com

www.facebook.com/guerrillaapproach

www.instagram.com/guerrilla_approach